The Dolores Lady Bears (8-5) used an 18-4 first-quarter advantage to come away with a 20-point win over the Mancos Lady Blue Jays (3-6) in Mancos on Tuesday.
Dolores used its full-court pressure to get into a rhythm, but Mancos head coach Mallory Morgan said that it wasn’t turnovers in the backcourt that hurt the Lady Jays.
“We would turn it over more so when we got in the half court,” she said on Wednesday. “The press didn’t hurt us, we were ready for that. We knew that was their bread-and-butter and we were prepared.”
After falling behind early, Mancos outscored Dolores by two points in the second and third quarters combined.
“Our press got off to a really good start, then we started mounting up some foul trouble,” Dolores head coach Larry Schwartz said on Wednesday. “It kind of hurt us in the two middle quarters because we had a couple of starters pick up three fouls early and had to come to the bench for a lengthy amount of time, so that didn’t help our cause there.”
Junior Brittney Peacock fueled the Mancos offense, and she finished with a team-high 15 points.
“She found the weak spots in our zone and that’s where she spotted up,” said Schwartz. “And she was able to hit some good shots.”
The Lady Blue Jays pulled within 12 points to start the fourth quarter, but Dolores was able to extend its lead and went on to win, 60-40.
“We were able to knock down some timely threes,” said Schwartz. “But our layups was the thing I felt like that got us that lead built up. We don’t want to live and die by the three, but last night we got six of them to fall.”
Larissa Umberger, Nicole Kibel, Tatum Majors and Sierra Schwartz all connected on 3-pointers in the contest, and Madi Archuleta hit two triples.
“We just can’t let them get shots off that easy, because they’re going to put them down,” said Morgan. “We just let them shoot way too much from the outside.”
Kibel led the Lady Bears with 19 points, Umberger scored 12, Wright finished with 10 and Majors added seven.
The Lady Jays were led by Peacock’s 15 points, and they got nine points from both Nicole Hess and Emily Cole, and five from Jessica Gutierrez.
Both Dolores and Mancos return to the hardwood on Friday. The Lady Bears will play in their fourth-straight away game, against Ignacio (8-3), and the Lady Blue Jays will look to pick up their first league win against Dove Creek (0-12) at home.